The Hallowed Isle Book One

by Diana L. Paxson

  Over her head the two men exchanged a look. Then Merlin nodded. Igierne knew they were humoring her. Perhaps it was seeing Morgause again that made her so desperate to know about her son.

  “I will go to him,” said the druid, “as soon as the marriage festivities are done.”

  She drew a trembling breath. “The wedding procession will be forming. You must take your places. Give me a moment to compose myself, and I will come.”

  On the table there was a flagon with wine. She poured some into a goblet and drank, waiting for her breathing to slow. There was a sound from the entry and she turned. Morgause was standing there, with two spots of color blazing in her cheeks. How long had she been there? wondered her mother. What had she heard?

  “It’s him—it’s my brother that you really want, isn’t it?” the girl said in a low voice. “But he doesn’t even know who you are, and Ebrdila was more of a mother to me than you. You might as well never have had any children at all! If I have babies I swear I will keep them by me! They, at least, will know they had their mother’s love!”

  She turned in a swirl of draperies and swept out.

  After a moment Igierne’s fury turned to a laughter that edged hysteria. She gulped down the rest of the wine and strove to control her breathing. It seemed a long time before she was calm once more. But when she emerged at last, the wedding procession was just getting underway. She took her husband’s arm, and the High King and High Queen of Britannia escorted Morgause to meet her destiny.

  Always, when Merlin came into the pleasant lands above the Sabrina estuary, he felt he was moving back in time. The Silure tribesmen to whom they had once belonged had long ago embraced the manners and culture of Rome, and though the old tribal capital of Venta Silurum now went by the name of Ker-Venta, on Saturday evenings the gentlemen of the countryside heated their baths, and they rode to visit, in the old fashion, in a carriage and pair.

  Merlin traveled on a sturdy gray mule, and he preferred to lie upon a patch of woodland rather than seek shelter with folk he did not know, and to bathe in the cold stream. The silence of the forest eased his spirit, and he blessed Igierne for sending him on this errand. Caius and Flavia would be surprised to see him, but their son Cai and Artor their fosterling knew him only as a wandering druid, and accepted his comings and goings without questioning.

  He came to the villa a week before the old festival of the goddess of the harvest and Lugos her defender at the time when the grain begins to ripen in the fields, which the Christians now called the Feast of Mary. To the people it made little difference; as always, they prepared to offer their first fruits to the Lady, and pray to the Lord to protect the harvest. It was not only the wheat that was growing stiff and golden and the barley heads that were beginning to hang low. In the orchards, the topmost apples were blushing red and golden with promise of sweetness to come.

  As Merlin turned down the lane from the High Road the branches of one of the trees began to shiver as if agitated by an extremely localized storm. From within the tree came high-pitched shouting. The druid reined in, and after a moment’s reflection, spun around himself the sphere of shadow that kept him from being seen.

  The branches thrashed again and a small, copper-haired figure dropped to the ground. Merlin recognized him as one of the villa’s Irish slaves.

  “I can’t get them, Cai, no matter how hard I shake. Those apples may look ripe, but they aren’t!”

  “I have sworn to offer them to Our Lady tomorrow!” said the boy who was standing by the trunk of the tree. Big-boned and black-haired, he had the look of Caius Turpilius senior already. “Climb back up and pick them if they will not fall.”

  “The top branches are too little—they will break, and I will fall!” objected the slave.

  “Well, I am certainly too big to climb up there!” said Cai rather smugly. “Try again! I order you!”

  “No,” put in the third boy, younger and smaller than the other two. His hair was the color of the tree trunk and he seemed nondescript, until you looked at his eyes. “That is an unjust order, and he doesn’t have to obey.”

  “Be quiet, Artor! I am the master’s son, and you are only a nameless fosterling! Treni, get up that tree!”

  Merlin bit his lip with remembered pain at the old insult. No doubt Caius Turpilius had kept his promise to raise the child as his own, but boys were acutely sensitive to questions of status; they should have anticipated that the other children would mock Artor.

  The boy himself did not change expression. Perhaps he was used to it or perhaps, like Merlin, he had become an expert at hiding his wounds.

  Cai gripped the slave’s arm and dragged him forward, but before they reached the tree, Artor scrambled up the trunk and gained the lowest branch.

  “I’ll do it—I’m the lightest of us three. Lie down, Cai, so I can land on something soft if I fall!” A sudden grin transformed his rather stiff expression into a look that caught at the heart. The branches shook as he clambered upward.

  Merlin nudged his mule forward, rehearsing spells to knit broken limbs. He could see the topmost branches, and as the Irish boy had stated, they were indeed very thin and small. For a few moments the motion ceased. Had Artor decided not to try it after all? A little way down from the crown of the tree he could see a thickening that might be the boy.

  Then something poked up through the leaves. It was a branch, with a twig pointing down like a shepherd’s crook. In another moment the branch on which the apple hung was hooked and pulled down into the leaves. He thinks! thought Merlin. He thinks as well as feels.

  “Throw it down, Artor!” came Cai’s voice from below. “I’ll catch it!”

  “You couldn’t catch the sun if it fell from the sky,” Artor called mockingly. “The apples shall come safe in my tunic, one each for the Virgin, the Mother, and the One who sorrows.” Another branch was captured and its fruit disappeared. A third apple went the way of the first two, then the hooked branch dropped and the tree began to shake as the boy started down.

  Merlin, who had brought the mule up behind the other two, let out his breath in a long sigh, dropping his concealment, as Artor appeared beneath the leaves and slid to the ground. The boy’s gaze traveled past Cai to Merlin and his eyes widened.

  “Lord Ambros! Cai—look, the druid has come! Treni, run back to the house and tell Lady Flavia! My lord, we did not expect you until autumn—you’ve never been here in the summertime!”

  He took one of the mule’s reins, and Cai took the other, and so escorted, Merlin passed through the orchard and up to the villa where Flavia was waiting.

  “You’ve not come to take him away?” Caius Turpilius asked as they waited for the evening meal. The long porch of the villa faced westward, so they could watch the sun set above the hills.

  “Not yet,” answered Merlin. “He looks healthy. He is doing well at his studies?”

  “Well enough,” Caius smiled, “though it is hard to keep the boys to their books on these summer days. His tutor says he asks too many questions.”

  “And physical exercise?” Merlin already knew that Artor was nimble, but the boys had sworn him to secrecy.

  “Cai is better at swordplay—of course he has the advantage of size. Artor is very quick, though, and no quitter. When he has his growth I think he will do well.”

  A gong announced the imminence of dinner, and they went in. The Turpilius household dined in the old Roman manner, reclining on couches around a central table. The food was simple, but well prepared: the usual hard-boiled eggs; a dish of lentils with cow-parsnips, seasoned with mint and coriander; fried trout from the river with a sauce of herbs and peas from the garden; and a boiled chicken with honey sauce. Merlin had often eaten worse at the table of the High King.

  It was more than enough for five adults, for Caius had invited their nearest neighbors as well. Caius and Flavia, of course, knew who and what Merlin was. To their household and neighbors he was merely Ambros, a wandering druid always welcome for his n
ews and his wisdom.

  Tonight, they wanted to hear about the wedding. It was surprising, they thought, that the betrothal had not been longer. But perhaps, commented Caius, the High King wanted to secure his northern borders in case Hengest’s son Octha returned from Germania.

  “What were they about to let him escape?” asked Flavia. “Because the old wolf had lost his teeth, did they think the young one had no fangs?”

  Hengest still lived and held his lands in Cantium, but he had not stirred outside his borders in many a year. No one knew whether he was still the leader of the invasion, or barely holding his own. When they were not attacking the British, a new generation of heathens squabbled with each other, and Octha, who had nearly overrun Eburacum some years before, had been among the most successful.

  But after several defeats, Uthir had taken him captive, and instead of killing him outright, as many advised, had held him as a hostage.

  “Did they think that Brannos’s ravens would guard him? They say that the heathen devil, Woden, is the lord of ravens. Perhaps his birds proved stronger than those of our ancient king!”

  They all laughed, but in truth, Merlin had wondered. As long as men could remember, there had been ravens on the hill by the Tamesis that was called the White Mount. According to the ancient lore, it was there that the head of the divine king, Brannos, had been buried, with the promise that so long as it stayed there Londinium should never fall.

  After the other guests had departed, Merlin took Caius aside.

  “It is in my mind to take Artor with me into the mountains after the festival. There are things that I can teach him there.”

  “Very well. I will instruct Phylox to pack his things.”

  Merlin shook his head. “No baggage. To live off the land is part of the teaching.”

  They left the villa before dawn, for the hills were farther off than they seemed. To Artor, Merlin said that he needed help to gather the herbs that grew wild there. At first Artor skipped ahead, exclaiming at the first birdsongs, the swift dart of the awakening swallows, the flicker of motion as a fox disappeared into the hedge. But as the sun climbed higher, he settled to an observant silence, imitating the druid’s ground-eating stride as well as his shorter legs could manage.

  Merlin had hoped that they could talk during the journey. When he had visited before, they had always been surrounded by the folk of the villa, and in planning for this journey he had realized that although he had been acquainted with Artor since his birth, he knew only the bright surface that the boy presented to the world. Was this reticence a natural characteristic, he wondered, or a response to the boy’s ambivalent status in Caius’s family?

  Merlin had spent his life gathering knowledge. Since the Night of the Long Knives, when he had failed so disastrously to see through Hengest’s cordial mask, he had devoted himself to the study of men’s souls, seeking to understand what lay behind their surfaces as once he had studied the secrets of the sky. Uthir depended on him to reveal the hidden motives of the men around him; it should not take long for him to learn the secrets of one child.

  By midafternoon they reached a band of open pasture, studded with limestone outcroppings, and began to search for herbs. In the deeper soil they found self-heal, paired leaves marching up the stem to the long purple flower head. In an ointment with goldenrod it was good for infected wounds. Among the rocks twined the strands of mountain pea with their paired leaves and tiny blue flowers.

  “Say a prayer of thanks to the spirit of the plant,” said Merlin, “and then dig it up and strip off the tubers that cling to the roots.”

  “What are they good for?” asked the boy.

  “Clean one off and chew on it, and you will see. The druids call this corma; it will stave off the pangs of hunger and give you energy.”

  Artor looked dubious, but he did as Merlin asked. In a moment his face changed, and the druid smiled.

  “It tastes good . . . sweet. . . .”

  “Save the others—you will need them for our journey.”

  Artor frowned and gazed back across the banding of grass and woodland that fell away toward the valley of the Wae, veiled by blue summer haze.

  “It is midafternoon,” he said thoughtfully. “Shouldn’t we be turning back soon?”

  “Not yet. Just beyond this ridge there is an oak wood that has other plants I need.”

  At the edge of the forest they found bilberries and brambles whose fruit was just ripening. Artor began to pluck and eat with a boy’s enthusiasm, moving deeper and deeper into the wood. Even Merlin was not immune to their attraction, though the taste brought back memories of his wanderings.

  What am I doing? he asked himself. I carry the blood of the Wild Men, who live on such things, but this boy is all human. Can he survive? What will he learn by starving here?

  “He will learn what you learned,” his daimon replied. “He will learn what he is made of . . . and so will you—”

  It seemed to Merlin that the answer was somewhat ambiguous, but he could get nothing more. Still, in this smiling weather, the boy could come to no harm wandering in the woods for a day or even two, and so he watched the sun dip towards the hilltop and kept silence.

  The sudden chill as the sun disappeared brought Artor back to awareness of the passage of time. He straightened, looking at Merlin accusingly. “It will be dark long before we get home!”

  “That is true,” said the druid. “Perhaps we should make camp here and start back in the morning. It will be an adventure—” He added, as Artor looked dubious, “It is something Cai has never done.”

  As he had expected, that argument had power, and the boy began to look about him with a new interest.

  “But what if we get lost?”

  “So long as the sky does not fall and the earth stands solid you cannot be truly lost,” said the druid, leading the way down the hill. “Have I not taught you how to observe the sun and judge the lie of the land, and what herbs will serve as food?”

  “Where will we sleep?” asked Artor.

  “Farther down the hill we’ll find water, and the trees will shelter us from the wind. Wrap yourself in your cloak and burrow into the leaves and you will sleep warm.”

  Artor nodded. “Soldiers camp out like this when they’re on campaign.”

  “Do you want to be a soldier?”

  “I have to know how to fight. We all do. My foster-father says that if we British had not forgotten how to be warriors, the Saxons would never have come.”

  “That’s so,” said Merlin. “That is why Vitalinus hired Hengest in the first place. He begged the magistrates and the chieftains to raise armies, but they were too accustomed to being defended by Rome.”

  “That was years and years ago—” Artor looked at him skeptically.

  “Ah well,” said the druid evasively, “that is what I have heard.”

  Beneath the trees it was growing dark already. They followed the sound of water until they found a grass-grown mudflat above a little stream.

  “Are the Saxons truly devils, as Father Paternus says?” asked Artor as they heaped up bracken for bedding and gathered sticks that the spring floods had lodged against the tree-trunks to build a fire.

  “There are Saxon slaves in Caius Turpilius’s household,” answered Merlin. “Are they demons?”

  “No . . . but they have been baptized.”

  “The priests make great claims for that holy water of theirs, but I have never noticed that it stopped any man from doing evil if he saw some great advantage in it, or that its lack prevented men from doing good if that was their will. No doubt those same Saxon devils are loving husbands and fathers when they are at home.”

  “But this isn’t their home!” exclaimed Artor.

  “The Wild Men might say the same to you. . . .”

  Merlin shut his mouth, wondering why he had said that. Even his mother, before she died, had managed to persuade herself that her child was the offspring of an angelic visitor. He rubbed his arms, wi
th their telltale covering of hair. He had never spoken to anyone of his time in the forest and what he had learned there.

  “Wild Men are a legend . . . aren’t they?” Artor gave him an odd look, and Merlin wondered what the boy was seeing in the flickering light of their little fire.

  “This whole wide earth is a matter of legend. The water is holy, and the stones, and the fire. The wind whispers tales of times that are gone. Maybe you and I will be legends one day.”

  Artor laughed, and somewhere within, the druid felt a pang. He had plotted and planned for this boy’s birth since he first set his hands upon the Sword of Kings. Only by raising up the Defender could he expiate his failure to avert the massacre at Sorviodunum. Only now, gazing into those clear eyes, did it occur to him to question his right to cast Artor in that role.

  His mother had cast him in the role of Prophet of Britannia. Did it matter that his childhood would have been even more unhappy if he had grown up in Maridunum? Her words, and the Vor-Tigernus’s need, had set his feet upon the path, and now he could not choose but follow.

  But Artor still had a choice. Igierne wanted to bring him up as a prince, but the dangers that had forced his guardians to raise him in ignorance of his destiny had also protected him from its stresses. Unlike Merlin, Artor had been allowed to be a child before he was forced to become a man.

  I will teach him all I can, thought the druid, but in the end, it is the spirit within him that must seek this fate. He must be allowed to choose.

  But that spirit must be tested. A young raven spent many days clinging to the edge of the nest, stretching and beating his wings against the air. Only if he did so would his wings be strong enough to bear him when his spirit finally compelled him to fly.

  “You are a good climber,” he said aloud. “Perhaps tomorrow we will find some mistletoe. In the lore of the druids it is called all-heal, and the powdered berries have great power against fever and diseases of the heart. But it must be used sparingly, for like many herbs, in the wrong dose it can be a poison.”